WordPress Parent Company Must Stop Blocking WP Engine, Judge Rules (theverge.com) 65
WP Engine just won a preliminary injunction against WordPress.com parent company Automattic. On Tuesday, a California District Court judge ordered Automattic to stop blocking WP Engine's access to WordPress.org resources and interfering with its plugins. From a report: The preliminary injunction comes after WP Engine, a third-party WordPress hosting service, filed a lawsuit that accused Automattic and its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, of "multiple forms of immediate irreparable harm." It later asked the court to stop Mullenweg from restricting WP Engine's access to WordPress.org.
Mullenweg waged a public campaign against WP Engine in September, accusing the service of misusing the WordPress trademark and not contributing enough to the WordPress community. After blocking WP Engine from WordPress.org's servers, Automattic took control of WP Engine's ACF Plugin.
Mullenweg waged a public campaign against WP Engine in September, accusing the service of misusing the WordPress trademark and not contributing enough to the WordPress community. After blocking WP Engine from WordPress.org's servers, Automattic took control of WP Engine's ACF Plugin.
Mystified (Score:3, Funny)
As a long-time Wordpress user and admirer, this really feels like standing in the driveway, watching Mommy and Daddy setting the house on fire and fighting to the bitter end.
Re:Mystified (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah. But don't worry, it will get worse. Automattic will whitelist their addresses on one single t2.nano AWS instance in Sydney, Australia with a 64kb rate limiter.
LOL! (Score:2)
Yeah. But don't worry, it will get worse. Automattic will whitelist their addresses on one single t2.nano AWS instance in Sydney, Australia with a 64kb rate limiter.
That would actually be quite funny. You're probably not the only one to have that idea so it's quite likely that exactly that will happen. ... I'll be following the situation with rising amusement should it go that way. :-)
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The injunction is quite specific, it requests a restitutio in integrum as of Sep 20th 2024. Automattic would have to prove that prior to Sep 20th 2024, there was only access to the t2.nano AWS instance in Sydney, Australia for WP Engine to be considered compliant.
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Judges tend to frown on playing games with their lawful orders.
Re: LOL! (Score:2)
I tend to frown on judges making orders that they think are lawful.
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I tend to frown on judges making orders that they think are lawful.
Names?
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I expect judges to only "make orders" that they think are lawful.
Do you want judges to "make orders" they think are unlawful?
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There's nothing judges love more than malicious compliance. They will definitely see in favour of Automatic and laugh it all off during the case.
Sidenote can I employ you for some legal advice? You sound really cheap!
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Thank god I only have "normal" bones. If yours are funny you should get them checked.
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Automattic will whitelist their addresses on one single t2.nano AWS instance in Sydney, Australia with a 64kb rate limiter.
Not unless Matt is prepared to pay fines and possibly serve jail time.
Generally speaking "smart aleck tricks" in attempt to circumvent a court order can give rise to a criminal contempt charge
Just change the license going forward (Score:2)
Add a clause that "use of abc.org's servers in excess of 25GB per day must be done under a separate paid license".
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Add a clause that "use of abc.org's servers in excess
Wordpress is licensed under the GPL, and custom clauses can't be added to the GPL.
Imposing a download limit would require a ToS on the website itself, which can only be enforced if you Require every user of the website to confirm agreement and sign-up for some type of account in order to identify each separate person you have an agreement with and track the usage towards that user's 25 GB limit.
The limit could not be enforced per network or per IP Addr
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As a long-time Wordpress user and admirer
Weird way to feel about the most infectious quagmire of garbage sites playing host to all manner of botnets and malware-laden plugins out there.
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Indeed. What is there to admire about Wordpress?
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as a long time WordPress user and supporter, this feels like watching the parents put the kids to work in the fields while the parents are busy living it up, we provide the free content while they suck up all the advertising revenue generated
wordpress.com and adsense are basically scams that grossly under pay people and with their $100 threshold for first payout, they are unfairly and deliberately sitting on billions of users income
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Not so much, Automattic is WordPress' mommy and daddy while WPE is pretty much an outside leecher.
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Wordpress was one of the founding investors in WPE, and later sold out.
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while WPE is pretty much an outside leecher.
Only in the sense that all Wordpress users are leechers and web hosting providers are leechers because Wordpress users hired them to host their website.
WPE is an agent of their customers. Their product is web hosting, and WPE helps their customers implement Wordpress because Wordpress is the tool their hosting customers want for managing their websites.
If Wordpress didn't exist WPE could be hosting Ghost or Grav, Plone, etc.
I would say they are not leechers but
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Yea. Matt's being a real dick about this.
He made open source software using the GNU license. Now, someone leverages WordPress to build a better hosting system than Automattic did, and he's pissed? This would be like Linus Torvolds going after Amazon or Microsoft for using Linux to power their cloud hosting ecosystem.
Wordpress.org also added a checkbox to their login screen that says "I'm not affiliated with WPEngine in anyway" or something similar.
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I don't know. If I had a popular open source project that someone else also made a successful business out of, I wouldn't begrudge them the success, but I also would feel like I needed to *help* them by donating my company's server resources and bandwidth to them.
Why is it so hard for WPE to just alter the source to make these calls to their own servers instead of to WordPress.org's servers?
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Why is it so hard for WPE to just alter the source to make these calls to their own servers instead of to WordPress.org's servers?
There's this:
This is because the standard WordPress[General Public License] core software “hard codes” thewordpress.org update site into every WordPress website, rather than making the update site a configurable option for each user.
Not that it matters. Blocking WPE wasn't about that, or trademark, or anything other other than some petty wannabe dictator is upset that they dropped the 'keep every edit by default' misfeature.
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This injunction could last less than a week.
I've never heard of a judge rendering a verdict in less than a week, much less a legal case getting closed out. This injunction will last as long as the case is ongoing. That's the whole point of an injunction.
Ok, phrasing, I get it ... (Score:2)
The effects of the injunction could last less than a week. That's what I meant.
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And the judge can haul the executives who ordered that into court for a contempt hearing. Judges do not like malicious compliance, and even without a contempt hearing, at best their lawyer is going to find it difficult to get any leeway from the judge for the rest of the trial. This tactic would not work out well for them.
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WP Engine is not a fair contributor to the community, they make one plugin, Advanced Custom Forms, which is a hook to their paid Pro version and have a lucrative web hosting business.
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There's also nothing in the license that says you have to offer the source via the internet at all. You just have to make it available at cost, and you could charge them for CD's with the update source on it. There's also nothing saying you have to offer any services. It's supposed to be a two way street. You don't have to make it easier for them to be leaches.
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I read that WP Engine is the largest sponsor of WordCamp, aside from organizing De{code}.
The first event is fairly accessible thanks to their financial support, while their own event is free.
So, while they may not be a big code contributor, they definitely contribute a lot for the community.
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WP Engine is not a fair contributor to the community
Maybe not a "fair contributor", but they do contribute to the community by offering a paid product that enhances the software.
Contribution to the community is not defined as giving freebies to users, nor as donating money to the devs.
Anyway.. Is there any reasonable explanation as to why WPE is being treated disparately from other hosting providers OTHER than Matt sees them as a competitive threat to their own hosting service?
For example: Digital Ocea
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WP Engine is in trademark violation
WordPress.com has a trademark on "WP"?
WordPress.org and the WordPress foundation can change their terms of service in 5 minutes and block WP engine from using their infrastructure once again.
Judges love it when you do an end run around their intent.
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WP Engine is in trademark violation
That's for the court to decide anyway. There is a counterargument.. The name "Wordpress" is descriptive of what the product actually does And non-creative, and therefore cannot actually be trademarked, even though the Trademark office issued a registration in error, for example. WPE can potentially come up with any number of arguments that put them not in violation.
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The name "Wordpress" is descriptive of what the product actually does
Ah, so it's software for literally pushing words onto things? It's a novel combination of two words. Nothing like Microsoft trademarking "Windows" and pretending that wasn't what windowing systems called an app's screen frame before they released their OS. But you're right that there is enough legal argument that it has to play out in court before you can actually say anything for sure.
I think it's totally reasonable to think WP Engine's name is not in violation just because WP is not a name that WordPre
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I think it's totally reasonable to think WP Engine's name is not in violation just because WP is not a name that WordPress was using.
Yes; there is no way a trademark registration for "Wordpress" covers the name WP.
And companies have the right to use a trademark nominatively. For example, Microsoft sells you a copy of Windows or a Windows surface.. You are allowed to resale the goods later as a middleman or in the aftermarket and use the name Windows nominatively to refer to the good when you are resel
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It seems like even a product by WP Engine titled "Managed Wordpress" would be the same
This, yes.
But if they named themselves WordPress Engine as the company name it would imply a relationship that isn't there and create confusion. Probably wouldn't survive a lawsuit.
Windows is a dictionary word. Microsoft has essentially no protection over the name Windows,
This is true for Windows because the name directly relates to its function. Apple is also in a dictionary but it can be trademarked within the domain of computers easily. That trademark does not extend into music without reaching a deal with the already existing Apple Records.
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But if they named themselves WordPress Engine as the company name it would imply a relationship
I suppose it could if they did, since the name Engine would suggest their product is a core component, and WordPress itself is thought of as an engine..
What may muddy the waters further it seems the Wordpress Foundation has recently applied for "Managed Wordpress [uspto.gov]" as a trademark within the past 3 months - specifically within the area of hosting services; which is in a Pending not yet examined status.
Please kindly remove Wordpress control from Matt. (Score:1)
Give the control of Wordpress to a real non-profit organisation that will not try to blackmail it's partners because they are too successful, while faking a hypocrite "open" eco-system that welcome everyone, unless of course, again you are too successful.
Just like a drug king pin, Matt is expecting business that use their eco-system and by the same time promote it, to pay him some sort of "success-tax"... if you're too big, at his convenance on his terms.
What in the actual extremist and left socialism fuck
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They kind of are mutually exclusive. At least in terms of Socialism's definition and origins. That doesn't mean there aren't people who use the word "socialist" to describe themselves, but don't meet the definition.
Socialism is social ownership of the means of production. It literally means that no individual can own a business or product, but that they must share any and all ownership with those around them. i.e. There is no person at a company who gets to have all the power, and that social owners (whethe
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Thank for your objective and constructive reply, and you're probably right on the autocrat part.
I am still wondering what if that someone is a non-profit fondation that has a claim: "WordPress Foundation is a non-profit organization that was set up to support the WordPress project.[149][150][151] The purpose of the organization is to guarantee open access to WordPress's software projects forever." but then start a world wide drama because they are not getting enough "PROFIT" from those who do succeed becaus
Whoa, dude, chill. (Score:2)
Matt himself admitted that he screwed the PR-pooch when he snapped earlier this year. He apologized and he promised to
a) call good friends and friendly industry experts before he does anything krass in the future
b) clear up the confusion about pursuit of trademark violations and make good with the community
c) stand back and have his/Automattics lawyers take care of the whole WP Engine problem/mess
Here are some very in-depth long-form talks where the FOSS community asks some tough questions, puts him through
Don't use Wordpress, use Drupal instead... (Score:5, Interesting)
...you'll never outgrow Drupal. That's why so many government websites are built using Drupal [drupal.org]. CNN, NYSE, Reuters, and a lot of Universities also use Drupal.
Drupal is truly open-source, along with all the modules contributed to drupal.org which are easily installable and managed with a command line or scripts. Everything is hosted on gitlab.com and nothing is going away or will be denied to anyone.
The open-source Drupal community is inclusive and supportive.
The new Drupal CMS initiative [drupal.org] has been a year-long effort to make Drupal much more user-friendly to new users, (in competition to Wordpress). Drupal CMS was formerly known by its code name, Drupal Starshot. Drupal CMS has no direct impact on Drupal core development, while offering many different recipes that can be applied over an existing website [drupal.org].
Drupal has an actual Security Team [drupal.org] that works well [drupal.org].
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The current state is still as it was - WordPress is still easier for a brochure site. BUT... Drupal CMS (formerly known as Starshot) is Drupal's first bonified attempt to take a huge leap ahead of WordPress in terms of usability through a better UX and, more importantly, a built-in AI system to help build sites. As of this fall, the early models/examples were impressive enough for the smarter, lower-tier Drupal "developers" (aka site builders experienced with Drupal's current UI but don't touch code) to con
Re:Don't use Wordpress, use Drupal instead... (Score:5, Informative)
Prelude: I was a Drupal maintainer [drupal.org]. My contributions include many contrib modules, as well as some core features (e.g. maintenance mode, watchdog API, syslog module, ...). Some of my contributed modules (Nagios) were in use at the White House during the Obama administration.
I agree with what you say about Drupal, with some nuance.
Drupal 8+ suitability for your web site depends on your particular case.
If you are a large organization, with a budget for in-house staff or the equivalent contractors/agencies, then by all means: go for it.
On the other hand, if you are a non-profit, or a small to medium business, then the current Drupal is overkill. Instead, use Backdrop CMS [backdropcms.org], which is a fork of the most popular version ever of Drupal, 7.x. It is faster, simpler, easier to maintain, while still being customizable, and having a wide range of contributed modules.
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+1 on BackdropCMS. The Drupal community really should've been better about promoting their forking Drupal cousin as an alternative to those who didn't have Drupal expertise available, but that's old news.
Dear Automattic; (Score:2)
Please, quietly, make a resale agreement with WPEngine. Resell their services under your name, branding it and taking a healthy skim off the top.
Set up a seperate corporate entitry to do this. Use the profit to further enhance your core products and satisfy your desires as much as it can.
Do not let us know this has happened until you've got it working right.
Sincerely,
All WP users who swear a pox on you for being such children.
Malicious compliance (Score:3)
Unblock access but rate limit it to 5kbps per connection with a total of 100 simultaneous connections....
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I get that much of the time a preliminary injunction is not a final permanent ruling but just a "hold" on an issue while the court case addresses the conflict and decides what the permanent ruling will be.
Still, the principle behind this is something I just can't reconcile with the facts of reality. From what I understand, WordPress.org is offering a service and that service is taking a massive thrashing from WP Engine to the point where WordPress (rightly or wrongly) considers it to be abusive.
Now the courts have just issued an order compelling WordPress.org to continue offering this service to their abuser free of charge?
It doesn't even matter to me whether WordPress is in the right or wrong here. Maybe they're unfairly discriminating against WP Engine who has done nothing wrong. But from what I understand, discrimination is only a crime in the USA if you are discriminating based on certain protected classes such as religion, race, gender etc.
I mean, imagine you own a restaraunt and some rude asshole comes in and starts disrupting your customers, it's within your right to kick them out, ban them permanently from your property and refuse service in perpetuity. That's not unlawful discrimination. It is your right as a business and property owner.
If I owned WordPress.org I would be seriously tempted to just close up shop and walk away out of principle. In the restaurant analogy, if a law were to compel me to accommodate disruptive customers I would quickly adopt the opinion that owning a restaurant is just not something I'm interested in any longer and I would liquidate and walk away.
Beyond unlawful discrimination against protected classes, you have no duty to provide commercial services to others at your own expense or on their terms. There is no law in the USA that I am aware of that could compel a company to stay in business... such a notion would be absurd.
Will be interesting to see how the court case concludes and what WordPress.org chooses to do regardless of the final ruling.
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In general you need to learn a lot about the law, but for the point you brought up, see promissory estoppel [wikipedia.org].
It would be better if your analogy of WP Engine being "some rude asshole comes in and starts disrupting your customers" matched any of the facts in the case, including from or claimed by Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Especially when it does largely match his on the record behavior, a lot of which was cited in the preliminary injunction by the judge.
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Obviously, you do know more about this than me, but it seems as though this is a step against freedom of association, as guaranteed in the bill of rights. Am I wrong about that?
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
He now wants to revoke that access, and instead charge people for the right to use it.
This has a name in the law. Promissory Estoppel. If you make a promise, and other people rely on that promise and build a business around it, you don't get to break your promise later, especially not with the explicit purpose of screwing over the people who trusted you.
Matt is being forced to provide services to users because he promised to do so in a legally binding fashion.
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Absolutely fair - I didn't know about that promise component - I've only been vaguely following the story.
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This preliminary injunction is a very small "step against freedom of association" compared to the many that started in the 1950s. Take your restaurant analogy and add that the "abusive" customer is black. It should be very clear the legitimacy of your removing him hinges on his genuinely being abusive, and saying it was because he accepted private equity would not fly, especially since you have from BlackRock. The judge and her clerks covered this [courtlistener.com] e.g. in the Balance of Equities section:
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I'm not the person who provided that example, but I appreciate the response regardless. I was just asking how this applies to Freedom of Association - constitutionally, the right to choose how and with whom to associate. There are certainly exceptions in place having to do with not discriminating based on inalienable characteristics, but I can't imagine generally requiring association between two entities based on a "business need"; the promise element is valid and, as someone who has only vaguely been foll
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From what I can see, the original promise, as stated below (thanks garrett_spencley) didn't include access to WP.Org resources, simply to the trademark and identity. How does that relate to accessing WP.Org resources?
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because he promised to do so in a legally binding fashion.
This is the part that I need clarification on.
So I found the actual complaint: https://wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Complaint-WP-Engine-v-Automattic-et-al.pdf
In 2010, in response to mounting public concern, the
WordPress source code and trademarks were placed into the nonprofit WordPress Foundation
(which Mullenweg created), with Mullenweg and Automattic making sweeping promises of open
access for all: “Automattic has transferred the WordPress trademark to the WordPress
Foundation, the nonprofit dedicated to promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related
open source projects in perpetuity. This means that the most central piece of WordPress’s identity,
its name, is now fully independent from any company.” Mullenweg and Automattic reiterated this
promise later, in even more forceful terms: “What’s important is that [] longer than I’m alive,
longer than Automattic is alive, longer than any of us are alive, there is something that holds the
WordPress code and trademark for the free access for the world.”
(bolded text is bold in the complaint)
Furthermore, I found an following article that seeks to explain Promissory Estoppel. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/promissory_estoppel.asp
It states that the four following criteria need to be met:
1. The promisor made a promise, with the intention that a reasonable person would act on it;
2. The promisee believed the promisor, and acted on that promise in good faith;
3. The promisor later reneged on that promise causing financial harm to the promisee; and
4. The nature of the promise is such that the only way to avoid injustice is by enforcing the promise.
1. What action here did WordPress believe that WP Engine would undertake as a result of this promise?
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Not in the least true, and it's hard to believe you read and understood the complaint when you missed things like attempted extortion, which in the hearing WPE's lawyers believed was their strongest claim, or tortuious interference, which the judge believed was the strongest as a matter of law since there are complexities in California's laws against extortion, and is what
Not what this is about (Score:3)
That is NOT what is happening. Matt Mullenweg runs both Automattic and WordPress.org. Matt has been on a tear in the last few months complaining that WP Engine doesn't "pay their fair share." WordPress is set up to use WordPress.org as its directory for plugins, security updates, etc. When WP Engine refused to p
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Why doesn't WP Engine just alter the source of WP to point to their own servers?
It seems rather shitty practice to rely on a competitor for core functionality of your product without compensation.
Divorce Court: Automattic vs. WP Engine (Score:2)
Automattic and WP Engine are like two spouses in a messy, toxic marriage. Automattic has been holding the family together—managing the household, keeping the lights on, and nurturing the open-source community. Meanwhile, WP Engine, the opportunistic spouse, has been benefiting from Automattic’s hard work, leaning on the WordPress platform to build its success but not pitching in nearly as much to keep things running smoothly.
Now, Automattic has reached its breaking point. The accusations are fly